Beedster

A Basschat member should never criticise another for using too much gear, it of course goes against the whole spirit, but if that's what you use for office noodling, I dread to think what you use for recording or gigging

Sounds like there might be a market for a double bass capo after all 👍

Watching the Funk Bass GOAT piece it's interesting because I always found Zender's lines so completely intuitive to play - not saying I do so with any aplomb - while the guy on the left describes how he finds them less so. I mentioned Zender as one of my key influences on here about 10 years back and I think a few folks replied suggesting that he was a plagiarist as opposed to an innovator (although the same could and probably has been said of the whole band), but I hear more in his playing than I ever heard in the funk players he was alleged to have borrowed from. Stunning player, especially given how young he was at the time 👍

Mmm, I’d get an Allparts or Warmoth neck with the appropriate profile, use it for a few months, and only if you’re 100% sure then get your neck done to the same dimensions. There’s always a risk doing work on a 50+ year old neck which you should keep in mind also

How to start a gig 👍

Yep, it's easy to assume a lot more knowledge than is the case Reminds me of when I used to gig my old 4003, the bass player from one of the other bands on the bill, probably in his mid-40s, came up in the break and said "What an amazing looking bass, I've never seen one like that before". "Mate, are you seriously telling me you've never seen Paul McCartney, Lemmy, Bruce Foxton, Chris Squire, Geddy Lee, any of those guys, playing one of these?' "No, sorry, and who were those last three......?" I kinda wish I was in that 'Just play my own bass in a band whose music I like blissfully unaware of all the other stuff' space, it would be so much cheaper

I didn't say that ply is as good as carved, I said there's nothing inherently wrong with ply. A well designed and constructed instrument made from high quality ply will most likely be superior to a poorly designed and constructed carved bass. OK, ply tends to be used for cheaper instruments, so in many cases the construction is also less rigorous, but that's not a function of ply as a medium/material, and even given this there are some very high quality ply instruments out there 👍

It's more likely that eBay are feeling the pain of platforms like Vinted, which pretty much everyone I know is now using for clothes. Re music gear, I used to look at eBay all the time on the off chance of seeing a bargain or rare instrument or piece of studio equipment, but those days are long gone. Ebay seems to be mostly new (or fake) items now, but if I want to buy new eBay is the last place I'd look, you usually get better service and lower prices going straight to the supplier/manufacturer. Ebay is still massive of course, and I doubt is in any sort of trouble, but they're probably getting more massive at a slower rate then their Execs planned for, so I guess they're trying everything

Nothing at al wrong with ply unless you're a wood snob 👍

We’re all waiting with you @funkle 👍

I wouldn’t put a mic inside the bass, there be dragons 👍

Brilliant 👍

....which is quite amusing given the review says "Very cool part that you don't have to pay attention to, if it's damaged you go to the car repair shop". That's where I'd always hoped to be able to get my expensive musical instruments fixed, the car repair shop 🤔

This ^ And to reinforce Jack's point, the action is (implied to be) high to excessively high but with no obvious means of lowering it given it's a fixed height and composite bridge. Taking that to a standard wooden instrument luthier will be like taking a Landrover Discovery to your local MOT garage, they're either going to rub their hands with glee at the projected income or make a complete mess of it. Or both

All of that plus I'd be concerned that I'd struggle to find a tech/luthier to work on a composite instrument, from the tech's POV wood's easy and forgiving material, composite less so 👍

Fender aren't alone after all

I think you're overestimating their ability to play psychological games in the marketplace (which would anyway amount to Russian Roulette), and underestimating the level of hard-wired groupthink in Fender. Much as the engineers at Apple used to be somewhere between tears and hysteria at the unveiling of a new model that was at best an incremental improvement on the previous model, the folks at Fender see this Innovation Series as innovation plain and simple. I imagine there's a sign placed directly over the entrance to the Fender Boardroom, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it....'.